There’s something unique and oddly compelling about the first several chapters of your typical LitRPG. Unique, compelling, and…isolated.
Continue reading “Intros in LitRPGs…and Beyond”Category: Musing
Productivity Talk: My Inner Ned, My Inner Homer
When I have a really successful week followed by a slack one, it’s like New Me seeing Old, More Successful Me across the backyard fence. New Me struggles to assemble a pool while Old Me happily trims the bushes.
“Hidely-ho, neighborino!” says Old Me.
“RRRAAAAAUGH!” screams New Me as the pool explodes.
Continue reading “Productivity Talk: My Inner Ned, My Inner Homer”The Creative Thrill is Gone?
I declare that my creative zest is at an all-time low.
Continue reading “The Creative Thrill is Gone?”Can’t Make Kid’s Programs Like This Anymore (…And Probably Shouldn’t!)
Quick: name something you can’t put on your TV network for six-year-olds in the United States. “Guns and excessive violence?” That’s old news. “Racism?” Uh, we hope that’s old news. Here are two categories I propose: “things that are nightmarish” and “things that are really gross.”
Let that sink in. Two categories that dominated children’s TV in the 90s and left a long shadow seem to be fading away.
(Also, if you are a kid, please don’t read this, or my PG-13 blog in general.)
Continue reading “Can’t Make Kid’s Programs Like This Anymore (…And Probably Shouldn’t!)”The 5 Most Futuristic Covers Of All Space-Time
Some albums, books, or other cultural artifacts look very “of their time.” Others—at least in retrospect—look like downright time-travelers.
And a recent impulse buy has graced me with the most bizarrely timeless cover art I’ve ever seen.
Continue reading “The 5 Most Futuristic Covers Of All Space-Time”‘Tis the Season to Relax-y
I wiped out hard this holiday season.
Continue reading “‘Tis the Season to Relax-y”Running Around in Video Game Levels You’ve Completed Already For No Apparent Reason (and Then Also Looking at Maps)
Going Back to Gen 1 Pokemon Warped My Brain
This is what real strategy looks like: skewed and archaic.
Continue reading “Going Back to Gen 1 Pokemon Warped My Brain”Platinum the Trinity Looks So Cool (And I Hate It)
BlazBlue sucks, last time I checked, but in my teenagerdom BlazBlue and its characters were just iconic.
Continue reading “Platinum the Trinity Looks So Cool (And I Hate It)”Hide No More: The Masquerade Trope in Fantasy Fiction (And How Elatsoe Kills It)
When people recommended the young adult novel Elatsoe to me, it was never as a quirky take on a fantasy world. That’s what it is, though: a modern America with spirit summoners, vicious vampires, and fairy children as its typical citizens. Magic is a known factor that makes travel convenient, complicates crime scenes, causes fantastical global warming.
Rather, the book was introduced to me as a story about grief, healing, and ghosts that features a Native lead. This is also a true statement about what Elatsoe is. What interests me about the discrepancy is how people don’t see a need to mention the setting, bizarre though it may be. Seemingly nobody is saying, “Brace yourselves, because this story has kind of an unusual world…”
That must be because the setting’s not so weird after all. Not since approximately 2005.
Continue reading “Hide No More: The Masquerade Trope in Fantasy Fiction (And How Elatsoe Kills It)”